International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science

The counting exact satisfiablity problem (#XSAT) is a problem that computes the number of truth assignments satisfying only one literal in each clause. This paper presents an algorithm that solves the #XSAT problem in O(1.1995ⁿ), which is faster than the best algorithm running in O(1.2190ⁿ), where n denotes the number of variables. To increase the efficiency of the algorithm, a new principle, called common literals principle, is addressed to simplify formulae. This allows us to further eliminate literals. In addition, we firstly apply the resolution principles into solving #XSAT problem, and therefore it improves the efficiency of the algorithm further.

Minimization of deterministic finite automata is a classic problem in Computer Science which is still studied nowadays. In this paper, we relate the different split-minimization methods proposed to date, or to be proposed, and the algorithm due to Brzozowski which has been usually set aside in any classification of DFA minimization algorithms. In our work, we first propose a polynomial minimization method derived from a paper by Champarnaud et al. We also show how the consideration of some efficiency improvements on this algorithm lead to obtain an algorithm similar to Hopcroft's classic algorithm. The results obtained lead us to propose a characterization of the set of possible splitters.

With the remarkable development of grid technologies, many grid architectures have been proposed which have evolved greatly in recent years. One of the major challenges for grid technologies is to build the scientific and technological base for share, collaboration, large-scale distributed systems. Theories and models of grid architectures are crucial to this attempt as well as to underpinning the foundations for constructing grid systems working effectively. On the basis of a coarse-grain classification of grid applications, we present a novel taxonomy of grid architectures: interaction-intensive architecture and computation-intensive architecture. In this paper, two new grid performance metrics are proposed to measure performance of grid systems. Then, we model grid architectures mathematically via queueing system M/M/1 and M/M/1/K; mean waiting time and total spending time are given. Furthermore, we investigate the performance of two grid architectures and compare them with each other; meanwhile a series of simulations are carried out to demonstrate the analysis results. Finally, we obtain some scientific principles guiding the grid architecture design and optimization.

The (n, k)-star graph is a generalization of the n-star graph. It has better scalability than the n-star graph and holds some good properties compared with the hypercube. This paper focuses on the design of the fault-tolerant routing algorithm for the (n, k)-star graph. We adopt the idea of collecting the limited global information used for routing on the n-star graph to the (n, k)-star graph. In the preliminary version of this paper, we built the probabilistic safety vector (PSV) with modified cycle patterns and developed the routing algorithm to decide the fault-free routing path with the help of PSV. Afterwards, we observed that the routing performance of PSV gets worse as the percentage of fault nodes increases, especially it exceeds 25%. In order to improve the routing performance with more faulty nodes, an adaptive method of threshold assignment for the PSV is also proposed. The performance is judged by the average length of routing paths. Compared with distance first search and safety level, PSV with dynamic threshold gets the best performance in the simulations.

We consider the online scheduling problem in a CPU-GPU cluster. In this problem there are two sets of processors, the CPU processors and the GPU processors. Each job has two distinct processing times, one for the CPU processor and the other for the GPU processor. Once a job is released, a decision should be made immediately about which processor it should be assigned to. The goal is to minimize the makespan, i.e., the largest completion time among all the processors. Such a problem could be seen as an intermediate model between the scheduling problem on identical machines and unrelated machines. We provide a 3.85-competitive online algorithm for this problem and show that no online algorithm exists with competitive ratio strictly less than 2. We also consider two special cases of this problem, the balanced case where the number of CPU processors equals to that of GPU processors, and the one-sided case where there is only one CPU or GPU processor. For the balanced case, we first provide a simple 3-competitive algorithm, and then a better algorithm with competitive ratio of 2.732 is derived. For the one-sided case, a 3-competitive algorithm is given.

Recently, Tang, Carlet and Tang presented a combinatorial conjecture about binary strings, allowing proving that all balanced functions in some infinite class they introduced have optimal algebraic immunity. Later, Cohen and Flori completely proved that the conjecture is true. These functions have good (provable or at least observable) cryptographic properties but they are not 1-resilient, which represents a drawback for their use as filter functions in stream ciphers. We propose a construction of an infinite class of 1-resilient Boolean functions with optimal algebraic immunity by modifying the functions in this class. The constructed functions have optimal algebraic degree, that is, meet the Siegenthaler bound, and high nonlinearity. We prove a lower bound on their nonlinearity, but as for the Carlet-Feng functions and for the functions mentioned above, this bound is not enough for ensuring a nonlinearity sufficient for allowing resistance to the fast correlation attack. Nevertheless, as for previously found functions with the same features, there is a gap between the bound that we can prove and the actual values computed for small numbers of variables. Our computations show that the functions in this class have very good nonlinearity and also good immunity to fast algebraic attacks. This is the first time that an infinite class of functions gathers all of the main criteria allowing these functions to be used as filters in stream ciphers.

In this paper we introduce a subfamily of synchronized alternating pushdown automata, one-turn synchronized alternating pushdown automata, which accept the same class of languages as those generated by linear conjunctive grammars. This equivalence of models of computation is analogous to the classical equivalence between one-turn pushdown automata and linear grammars, thus strengthening the claim of synchronized alternating pushdown automata as a natural counterpart of conjunctive grammars.